Remembrance
by This is My Truth Tell Me Yours
Summary: Captain Picard needs time to think. That is why Laris found him inside Notre Dame, pondering everything that had happened since he first met Dahj. Her friend has a heavy heart, and while he waits for information on how to find the girl's sister, the Romulan and the Captain talk. A small scene, set right after the first episode of Star Trek: Picard. Many spoilers.


_**DISCLAIMER:** The ideas belong to me. The characters and everything else in the Star Trek Universe belong to CBS..._

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They were in Paris. Captain Picard had reached out to an old friend at the University, one who had contacts in the Daystrom Institute in Okinawa. He knew Dahj had been accepted as a fellow in the institute recently and that was his best hope to track down her sister and find a way to get in contact with her. Now, however, there was nothing to do but to wait. He hadn't told Laris where he was going, but the Romulan knew the Captain well enough to know that there was only one place where he could possibly be right now.

She stood in front of the tall towers at the façade of the Notre Dame Cathedral for a long time before she entered.

When Laris had first moved to Earth this was the first place Jean Luc took her to in Paris. He loved the old cathedral. He loved the tall stone towers, the arched windows and the harmonic symmetry of the façade. He loved that the building had survived the centuries. It had survived World Wars, Iconoclastic Riots and the Post-Atomic Horror. It survived fires and raids and carelessness and neglect. It was scarred, no doubt and many of the original parts had been removed and degraded, but the church was still standing, solid and eternal. Earth was not the same place it was when that building was made, and yet, there it was. An anachronistic jewel in the face of Paris.

It reminded Laris of the old temples in the Capital City at Romulus. It brought tears to her eyes to think of it. Of all that had been lost. Their architecture had been so grand… Humans and Romulans had that in common. Humans of the past at least. There weren't many more buildings on Earth like this one, she was told. The cathedral, however, still existed, and it was beautiful. The Captain had told her that once the toll of its bells was the very heartbeat of Paris.

When Laris entered the church, she immediately saw Captain Picard sitting on a bench in the third roll. The place was otherwise empty. A place like this would be crowded with tourists in Romulus, but for the past several years humans had moved farther and farther away from their past. That building used to be a temple for religious services. Humans had grown beyond religion and therefore visiting the church made little sense. That was what young people were taught these days, much to her friend's dismay, and that meant that other than the occasional student of History, the cathedral was empty most of the time.

In a way, it was a blessing. She had a feeling Jean Luc needed a quiet place to think.

When she reached his roll the captain smiled at her and welcomed her to sit by his side.

"What's this?" Laris asked, noticing the thick, worn-out book in Jean Luc's hands.

He took a deep breath before he answered, flipping the book in his hands and tracing the words on the cover with his fingers. It was a flexible leather cover, and it seemed worn out as if the book had been carried to many places and read many times.

"It's something I gave Data long ago when he first told me he was ready to have a child."

"Data?"

"Yes," Picard answered simply, smiling because of the memories in his mind. "He was my friend. I wish he was here. I would have given my life for his, had I been given the chance."

"For a synthetic?" Laris asked. There wasn`t judgement in her voice. Mainly curiosity and disbelief. It was understandable, Jean Luc thought. She hadn't known him.

"Oh, he was much more than that. He couldn't see it sometimes either. We were on orbit around Vandor IV once, and the planet was experiencing time distortions so profound they even affected the Enterprise. I decided to send Data down alone because he was the only one who was able to control the effects of the distortion. An away team of one, I told him."

"Seems logical."

"Data thought so too. But he misunderstood my meaning. 'I am a machine,' he said, 'and therefore, dispensable'. Indispensable was the appropriate word."

"He was… unique."

"Yes. In more ways than one. His death was something monstrous. He could have gone on forever." Picard held the book almost as if it was his friend's hand that he was holding. "I never realized how big a gap his absence would leave in my life. I never expected to be here without him."

"Because he was synthetic?" Laris ventured.

"No. It's not just because he was an android. It's because he was young. Much younger than me. I am old. I must be gone soon, but Data… He was so much at the beginning of everything. In many ways, he was only a child."

He paused then, but Laris said nothing. Her friend seemed to be lost in his memories and she didn't wish to interrupt. It was several moments before the Captain spoke again:

"He used to come to me for advice. He was like… Like a younger brother, I suppose. A much closer brother than I had ever been to Robert. But the things Data needed advice on… Sometimes it was simple. As simple as understanding the meaning of a word like 'snoop'. Other times, however… He had questions about life and death, about ethics, philosophy and theology… About love… Questions mankind has struggled with for centuries. Questions most humans never get to the point of asking themselves. He often asked me about things I knew nothing about… So I gave him books. I hoped to help him find answers in the same places where I looked for answers myself."

"Is that why you gave him this book?" Laris indicated the volume in his hands with a gesture of her head.

"Yes. It's an old French novel. It's the story of a man who finds himself as the father of a young girl at the twilight of his life. It's the story of how she came into his life unexpectedly, and how he only learned to love when she was in his keeping."

"It sounds beautiful."

"Data was worried about it, you see. He was worried about having another child, and one of the things he was worried about was that he couldn't love her. It seemed to be an essential component to parenting, he said."

"Another child?"

"Yes, he'd had a child before. Lal. She didn't live long."

"What happened?"

"She was an android, just like data, but she evolved. She became more than her program. You see, Lal could feel. But the emotions overpowered her. They originated a cascade failure in her neural net and there was nothing anybody could have done. We mourned her when she was gone. She was… remarkable."

"I take it that Data didn't have emotions written into his program."

"It was the deepest desire in his heart. Basic human emotions. He didn't talk of having a child again for many years after Lal's death. I know he studied Vulcan disciplines for a long time. He thought that perhaps if he had another child, Vulcan techniques to control emotion might be a solution to stop another catastrophic neural net failure. It was difficult for Data to understand Vulcans…"

"I should imagine an Android and a Vulcan to be rather similar." Laris pointed out, unwilling to miss an opportunity to heat up that old rivalry. She was very passionate, as Romulans often are. And like most Romulans, Laris had trouble understanding the Vulcans' determination to deny themselves emotions.

Jean Luc laughed.

"You are right, I suppose. In some ways. But most Vulcans aspire their whole lives to achieve what Data was given by design. His superior intelligence, his lack of emotional impediments… And yet, Data sought with all his heart to achieve that to which most Vulcans willingly turn their backs. For a man who had wished for emotions his entire life, but never felt them, for him to study disciplines design to keep emotion away… I admired him for it."

"He was successful then? Vulcan disciplines were the answer to avoid neural failure."

"I am not sure. Data never created Dahj when he was alive, as far as I know, she was the work of Madox. But I know he was ready to have a child again. He told me that when he came into my ready room, a few months before Will and Deanna's wedding. He brought me the first painting. The one that's hanging on the study at the chateau."

"The one of a girl in a rocky shore."

"Yes. Data told me he wanted a daughter. It was curious because the first time he had a child he made her genderless because he wanted her to be able to choose her own gender and appearance. But this time he told me he wanted a daughter. He told me he wanted to hold her hand and explain how the universe worked for her. He wanted to share in her experiences. He told me he wanted to hold his daughter in his arms and tell her she would never be alone. Alone like he had been. He asked me if that was wrong of him."

"What did you say?"

"I told him that it was human. Then, I gave him the book… I imagined Victor Hugo would have more to add than me."

"And did it work?"

Jean Luc smiled again. He opened the book in his lap, flipped a few pages and Laris could see that there were many underlined passages and notes scribbled in the margins, next to the French words. That book had clearly been loved.

"It's his copy," Jean Luc said quietly. "He came back to my ready room a few weeks after we had that conversation. That's when he gave me the second painting, as a thank you for giving him the book. That painting was almost like the first, except that this time, the girl was looking back at us and I could see her face. Data told me he felt like he had to paint it. He told me he saw his daughter's face in a dream."

"He could dream?"

"Yes," Jean Luc said quietly again, wiping away a single tear from his eyes. "He never had the time to create her though. But I know he would have loved her. He would have loved her, in his own way."

They were quiet for a long time after that. Laris looked up at the ancient Gothic altar, splendidly encumbered with shrines and reliquaries. It was a reconstruction, she knew. The old altar had been destroyed long ago, in one of the many fires that marked the History of that human city. But it was beautiful nonetheless. The stained glass windows too mesmerized her. She loved the way the colors became bright when the sunshine hit them from behind like that. Laris was not familiar with the stories behind those images but she appreciated them even so.

"It's beautiful isn't it?" Jean Luc asked, awakening her from her musings.

"Yes." She answered. Then she looked him in the eye and asked: "You are worried about the girl, aren't you? The sister?"

"I feel much like Data felt when he came into my ready room all those years ago, I think. When I gave him this," he indicated the book in his hands.

"What do you mean?"

"When I realized who Dahj was… When I held her hands… I can't quite explain it. It was like something new came into my soul. I felt as responsible for her happiness and well-being as if I had promised it to her father when he was alive. I wanted to protect her. I wanted to make sure no harm would ever come to her."

"You felt… like a parent."

"I don't know… I have never been a father myself. I have never been a husband. I barely remember being a brother or an uncle. Most of my friends are long gone. I can hardly believe in how I spent the past ten years. When I was a boy I used to sit outside, in my father's home and look up at the stars dreaming of the day I would travel among them. I told myself again and again that when I learned to fly I was never coming back. I would never waste my life away in La Barre. And yet, this is exactly what I have done for the past ten years."

"You are being too hard on yourself."

"Am I? When I met Dahj it was like something had awakened inside me. I was proud of her, and I feared for her and a dozen different emotions I couldn't even understand. For the past ten years, the world became such a different place from the place I knew. So much darker. Less kind. It barely seemed worth living in it anymore but when I held her hands I felt such… Such hope. Hope like I never knew I had inside me."

"Jean Luc…"

"She trusted me! She didn't even know me, but she trusted me, she trusted me because Data trusted me and I failed him. She came to me for help but she didn't know, she couldn't have known that I am old and spent and good for nothing anymore… I watched her die! Not only I couldn't help her, but I also had to watch her die. I thought I might have died as well, but when I found out she had a sister…"

"We are going to find her," Laris said, reassuringly.

Captain Picard nodded quietly. He opened his mouth to speak and closed it again. Then he looked down at the book in his hands and when he spoke, Laris could tell he was quoting from the story in those pages.

"Poor old man, with a perfectly new heart."

Then he looked up at the altar and became quiet. If she hadn't known any better, Laris might have thought the Captain was praying…

"What's on your mind?" Laris asked.

"I know she is out there somewhere. I think she is in danger. She is in danger and she doesn't even know it," Picard started, his voice increasingly desperate. "She might not even know who or what she is! I don't know if she has a family if she has friends if she has someone to watch over her…"

"Well," Laris said firmly, placing a hand on the Captain's arm and interrupting him before he could say another word. "She has a father now."

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**Author's Note**: The First episode of **Star Trek: Picard** was brilliant. It was so inspiring, it made me put pen to paper and create this story, a short scene set after the first episode, before the second one. I can`t wait until Counsellor Troy and Captain Riker make an appearance. I want to know what they are doing in this Universe so I can write about them too! I want to see more of all of them... It is my deepest wish to be a part of Star Trek one day, and so far, writing these fics is as close as it gets... And it's pretty great...

I would very much appreciate some feedback. I will update the category as soon as ff dot net add a Star Trek: Picard category.

**Live Long and Prosper**


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